


Cross My Heart

by UselessReptileWrites



Series: Dragon Brothers [2]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Books)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, death mention, we really need to have more fanfiction of these two brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-30 19:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15103757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UselessReptileWrites/pseuds/UselessReptileWrites
Summary: Furious will always stand by his older brother, but is this latest idea too dangerous?





	Cross My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was originally done for the 2016 Celebrate HTTYD week "Duo or Duel" prompt on Tumblr. 
> 
> Bolded words are Dragonese.

**“I don’t like it.”**  Furious added an extra snort at the end for emphasis. His wingless brother nearly blew over in the sudden storm. Furious cursed himself for forgetting he wasn’t as small as he used to be. Nowadays his brother barely reached the top of his foot.  _Why must I be so big compared to him?_ He thought with a displeased curl of his tail.

**“Oh, come on.”** Hiccup straightened up from where he stood on Furious’s paw, lifted up to his dragon-brother’s face. He patted one of the claws that could so easily impale him.  **“You said that when we visited Breakneck Bog.”**

Furious flicked an ear in irritation. Yes, he remembered that. Even then he towered over his elder sibling and by far his favorite one (though he wouldn’t tell anyone). He hadn’t learned to fly yet; he’d had to swim after Hiccup, who went there on the back of their Silver Phantom best friend Skyriver. He’d complained the whole way–their parents were going to punish them, the ocean was getting too cold, they were leaving the archipelago–but then they’d sweet-talked the Smothering Smokebreaths there into revealing the best places for fish. He loved the taste of fish and sincerely regretted that he’d grown too big for it to be a substantial meal. Whale meat wasn’t bad, but certainly not as good as Atlantic cod.

Of course, their parents scolded them, prevented them from leaving the cave for half a moon, and didn’t let their friends visit, but it was worth it.

But this?

**“This is the worst idea you’ve ever had,”** Furious continued.  **“And I’m counting the ‘let’s collect those pretty looking beehives’ one.”**  He lashed his tail at that, leaving a scar in the cliff surrounding them. He winced and tucked the offending appendage under his legs. At least this wasn’t Tomorrow, he told himself; Grimbeard’s soldiers would’ve found them immediately. While they couldn’t do much to him, he’d rather avoid the hassle of finding another place or talking over their shouting.  **“And the ‘let’s see what happens if you eat a bunch of eels’ one. And the trip to Death’s Head Island? What about that? And how in the world could you forget** **–”**

Hiccup chuckled. Furious felt his ears flatten against his head. Human laughter was a lovely sound when it came from that throat, but not when it came at the expense of his safety.  **“Relax, you big baby. This isn’t that bad.”**

**“Not that bad?”**  Furious felt smoke waft up his throat and through his nostrils. **“You forget who you’re dealing with.”**

Furious had not forgotten. Hiccup was out hunting on his own. His parents had taken Furious aside and asked for him to accompany his elder brother. Hiccup, they said, was smaller and weaker than most dragons, excepting nanodragons and the smaller ones at risk of being enslaved to hunt for wingless Vikings. So they wanted Furious, under the guise of wanting to learn how to hunt from his older brother, to keep an eye on Hiccup and make sure he didn’t hunt prey out of his league.

But then the Vikings had come. They were out of their league, but the Vikings weren’t prey. They were predators.

* * *

 

_Hiccup stalked in the undergrowth a short ways ahead of Furious, watching the tall wingless creatures blunder around the forest in a sick parody of a hunt. They held long straight branches made out of strange gleaming stone as slick as rivers and bent sticks with the opposite ends tied together by a strand of what looked like particularly thick spiderthread. Even thicker strands, made out of the same material as those long branches they held out ahead of them, looped over their shoulders. Despite the uniqueness of the items, they trampled through the forest as loudly as a pack of injured boars._

**_“What are they?”_ ** _Hiccup whispered, his voice sounding like the clicking of a bug._

**_“They look like you.”_ ** _Furious’s normally deep and rumbling voice was as soft as a wind as he lay hunched in the distance, his green scales helping him to look like a large hill._

_Hiccup nodded and looked down at his body, free from scales, claws, or even wings. He walked like dragons with two legs and held his arms slightly away from his body like wings, but everyone knew he wasn’t a dragon._

_There was a squawk, and a Nadder flapped down from the canopy and perched on one of the hunter’s shoulders. The human said something in loud choppy sounds, as far from the fluid chirps, clicks, and rumbles Dragonese made._

**_“Why don’t you go look yourself?”_ ** _the Nadder said, but waved a wing off to the side._

_The creature grunted and didn’t reply, just led the group further into the forest. Hiccup followed, keeping low. Furious could only creep along on his belly after thirty seconds._

_Furious hadn’t even settled into the shadows again when he heard the wingless start roaring. He couldn’t understand what it meant, but the tone enough was clear._

_The Nadder cowered back. **“Didn’t you expect the boars to move?”** Despite the bravado the words implied, the growls were soft and submissive._

_The creature continued to roar at her. Furious felt the spines on his back prickle. How he longed to charge forth and breathe fire over these strange creatures. But he also felt his scales turn with unease whenever he looked at them, like he should fear them and hide away, somewhere safer even than his parents’ cave._

_Hiccup, though, didn’t seem to share the same sentiments. He’d snapped his head back, lips peeled back into a snarl._

**_“Don’t,”_ ** _Furious hissed, but it was too late. Hiccup burst out of the safety of the bushes, flapping his arms like a dragon trying to use its wings to make itself look bigger, baring his upper canines and snarling out curses._

_It was as Furious feared; the two-legged creatures paused only momentarily before throwing a strange thing made out of dead brown snakes tied together to form a square trap, weighed at the end by stones. It snared Hiccup and Furious’s big brother collapsed. He immediately squealed with outrage, flailing his limbs in an effort to untangle them._

_Furious narrowed his eyes. They couldn’t do that his brother. He stood up, forgetting the foreboding feeling making shivers run down his body, and charged at them. He inhaled, feeling gas gather at the back of his throat in readiness to flame the attackers, but then something flew out of one of the hunters’ hands and snared itself around his muzzle and legs. He went to test their strength, but the hunters were already charging forward, the strands of cold stone stuff that clanked as they coiled around his body working around his feet and wings._

_The hunters stood and roared at each other some more before they, and several larger dragons they summoned and roared at to make them help, dragged Furious toward the ocean. They’d taken Hiccup first, his small, fragile body easily for one hunter to toss over his shoulder. They had made cages to keep them in until they decided what to do with them._

_Furious so wished he could ask Hiccup what was going on. But they’d kept those shiny things around his mouth, so he couldn’t do anything beyond rumble incoherently. They hadn’t done the same with Hiccup, but he was sitting in the corner of his cage, glaring at the hunters, not talking or even roaring for their parents._

_And then he came walking from the shoreline, roaring at the other hunters. His hair was as red as flame, so red it nearly hurt to look at. His muscles rolled underneath his soft skin, not an inch of fat. He wore the hide of a dragon with the scales still on. One of his subordinates flinched at every roar, but then pointed at the prisoners. Most notably, Hiccup._

_The red-haired man staggered back and swallowed, his roars lost. He glanced between his subordinates and Furious’s older brother, who glared at him. Hiccup made a spitting noise that Furious had never heard before._

_The man roared at the subordinate again, and he quailed and shook his head, whimpering out a single word._

_The man stared at both brothers for a moment, then uttered two syllables._

_“Bring them.”_

* * *

 

That human, as they turned out to be, was Hiccup’s birth father, the one that helped produce his egg but had abandoned him. For ages they’d kept Hiccup and Furious on their island, called Tomorrow, in separate areas of their constructed caves. That was, until Hiccup managed to charm his birth father into letting Furious go, with the promise that Furious wouldn’t lift a claw to hurt anyone on Tomorrow. Furious had had no choice but to obey that promise. A promise was a promise. Hiccup himself had made Furious cross his heart before opening the cage.

And Hiccup? He’d sworn on his heart that if they let his younger brother go, he’d stay on Tomorrow with Grimbeard the Ghastly, the one behind the enslavement of dragons, and his birth father. 

Of course, Hiccup never promised not to visit Furious and his true family. Whenever he could, he’d free a batch of dragons and convince one grateful one to give him a lift to his homeland. His real, loving parents always welcomed him back. Furious and Hiccup’s other siblings, some adopted, some hatched to the Grimlers, would be over the moon. If Furious wasn’t sneaking over to Tomorrow to console himself that Grimbeard hadn’t turned on his birth son, he was too afraid to wander far from home in case he missed a visit, even if he had to sleep offshore now to avoid destroying all the trees on the island. 

Hiccup would regale them with all his efforts to help free Grimbeard’s slaves, human and dragon alike. Despite his efforts, though, Grimbeard and his pirates kept bringing in slaves with stolen treasure, and the warriors kept catching hatchlings to serve them. After the first few liberations, Grimbeard had wised up and put all sorts of protections against jailbreaks. Hiccup managed to out-think them all with some incredibly daring plans.

But this plan wasn’t just daring; it was reckless.

**“Don’t you want to free all dragons?”**  Hiccup asked. Furious swore those large eyes were more hypnotic than a naturally hatched dragon. You hated to see them lower with disappointment, making you want to do anything to avoid it.

But this plan was nothing but trouble. Shivers down his scales like those he’d felt when he first saw humans returned with a vengeance. But his brother didn’t believe “hocus pocus” like that. He said that was the way of the Vikings, clinging to ideals of gods in the sky fighting it out for humans to live in the world. 

**“I do, but this won’t work.”** Furious put his snout lower to truly look at Hiccup from eye-level, even though it hurt his neck.  **“You know Grimbeard better than anyone. He’s not going to roll over for a peaceful demonstration.”**

**“But this way no one gets hurt,”**  Hiccup said.  **“And if you’re leading the assembly, Grimbeard will surely find your size persuasive. He can’t yell his way out of this one.”** Hiccup stood up so tall, his eyes so bright. Furious almost came around.

And then a shiver ran down his body again. He imagined those eyes no longer bright and shiny, but fixed and clouded. 

**“But if things go wrong** **–”** Furious began.

Hiccup shrugged, a movement so loose and fluid and human. **“What could possibly go wrong?”**

Furious snorted and rolled his eyes.  **“Last month you were complaining about characters in those books you’re always talking about say that and end up walking into a trap.”**

**“But this isn’t a book.”** Hiccup grinned, a crooked flash of teeth.  **“I promise you nothing will go wrong. Everything will be okay!”**

Well, maybe that wasn’t so bad, Furious conceded, letting his spines settle down as he straightened his neck. If things truly got bad, he could always pick Hiccup up and fly to safety. After all, Hiccup had not promised not to be spirited away by his younger brother, a loophole he should’ve thought of ages ago. They might not be able to return home in case the hunters came after their family, but it could just be him and Hiccup, exploring the world together. Hiccup was always talking about how he wanted to make a map someday, about all the adventures he wanted to have.

**“Okay. I’m sure some dragons will want to join us,”**  Furious said. He pressed the dull side of one of his claws, the one that humans called a thumb, against Hiccup’s chest. **“But promise you won’t get yourself killed.”**

Hiccup smiled and made an X above his heart.  **“Cross my heart and hope to die.”**

**Author's Note:**

> As always, constructive criticism is welcomed!


End file.
